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Renee Benson is a New Orleans based singer, songwriter, poet and composer from New York. As a singer (jazz, hip hop, soul, funk, gospel, reggae and more), she has performed in Germany, Austria, Turkey, UK, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Holland, Denmark and Romania.Last year, she had a blast performing at the Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK. She won 3rd place at the Roux Carre Talent Search "Battle of the Bands" held at the New Orleans House of Blues. In 2011, she performed as part of the Austrian entry for Eurovision and has performed at the LifeBall in Vienna. Renee is the lead voice for the experimental jazz and hip hop collective, "No Home For Johnny," labeled as the highlight of the 2015 Popfest festival in Vienna. She teaches songwriting, voice and experimental vocal sound around the world with a number of institutions including: Girls Rock (Austria),Young Audiences, as the musical director for Caravan Stage Theater Co and has built an arts intensive program program in the South Bronx (running for its third successful) for young women called IN MY WORDS www.inmywordsbronx.org. Renee looks forward to her summer residency teaching a music camp at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA). Currently, Renee is getting ready to take the stage (again!!!) at The Glastonbury Musical Festival in June 2017 and can't wait to record her debut album "Malshun" this Summer.

Over the past 10 years, she has split her time between New York and Europe — spending the bulk of that time writing and performing in Vienna. She studied vocal performance under Ariel Bybee, a prominent mezzo-soprano at the Metropolitan Opera for eighteen seasons and creative writing with Kenyan writer N’gugi wa Thiong’o, author of “Decolonizing the Mind.” Renee holds a bachelor of fine arts (BFA) at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University.